For Tomorrow
by July Storms
Summary: He stumbled along blindly through his words—words he had probably rehearsed a hundred times on the ride to the castle. Anna only heard half of them over the sound of her heartbeat. "Accident," he said, and "ice," and a million other things that she wished immediately to forget.


**"For Tomorrow"**

**Notes**: This short story assumes that even after marriage, Kristoff would keep his job as an ice harvester. Feedback would be great. Written for Searlait! (2,555 words)

* * *

The news came before the passionate blossoming of spring, and from the mouth of a man who looked, to Anna, to be too young.

Young felt like a funny word in her mind as she was ushered into the throne room, but she didn't feel young anymore herself, so the man standing alone on the floor whose eyes were focused on his shoes, whose face was still full with baby fat, and whose skin was unmarred by the passage of time struck her as quite young—a boy, really.

He could not look her in the eye at first, and everything was silent—strangely so, Anna later remembered thinking. The people loved it when Elsa held audience with them, and even from the roof Anna could hear their chattering as they waited to be seen.

The silence did not bother her as much as it should have, because when she entered the room, Elsa stood up. Queens stood for no one. Anna knew, then, that something was wrong—something about this ruddy-faced boy who twisted his cap in his hands and stared at the floor, and Elsa, whose eyebrows were drawn together in a way Anna had hoped to never see again.

"You should sit down," Elsa said before Anna could complete the curtsy that custom demanded of her.

She knew it was not a moment to babble, but the words escaped before she could stop them, nervous stupidity that had no meaning and even less thought behind it. "Sit? Me? There? I couldn't—you know, that's yours—the throne, I mean. I can't sit there. It wouldn't be right!"

"Anna, _please_." It was pathetic-sounding coming from Elsa, who had grown more assured over the years, and whose struggles with anxiety had ebbed and left in their wake a strong and capable queen. The _please_ told Anna that for all Elsa's intellect and skill, and despite the years of experience to her credit, this situation was somehow beyond her, out of her reach or perhaps realm of understanding. It was Elsa's way, she thought, of saying, _"I don't have an answer."_

Without another word, she slid into the seat reserved for Queen Elsa of Arendelle. It felt wrong to sit there, wrong to see the fabric of her sister's dress on her right. It was not unusual for her to be called to assist the queen during her audiences; everyone said that Anna was good at understanding people, privy to a kind of innate connection to others that the queen lacked. Instinctively, perhaps, she knew that this was different.

Elsa looked too pale. The hall was too silent. The boy was too young.

Anna bit her lip, worried it between her teeth, and looked to her sister, though she wasn't sure why.

Elsa's lips were pursed in thought or confusion or maybe something else, but she eventually spoke, saying, "I am very sorry to have to ask you to repeat yourself, but please do."

Anna turned her gaze to the boy. His hands kept twisting his hat in his hand until Anna was sure it would fall apart. When he pulled his gaze away from the toes of his boots, she realized his eyes were red, like his face.

She could feel her heart begin to thud all the way up into her throat.

"Princess Anna," he started to say, voice shaking.

"No," she said.

But he didn't stop; he stumbled along blindly through his words—words he had probably rehearsed a hundred times on the ride to the castle.

Anna only heard half of them over the sound of her heartbeat.

"Accident," he said, and "ice," and a million other things that she wished immediately to forget.

She answered every word with, "No," knuckles white as she clutched her left hand with her right, just to have something to hold onto.

But to the last word, a shuddering attempt at consolation by this boy who did not know her, a soft and truly regretful, "Sorry," Anna could only give a disbelieving laugh.

"Sorry?" she asked, and felt sick, overwhelmed.

Elsa's hand landed on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, feeling hurt and lost and a little angry. Why did Elsa have to call her here, to hear this news so publicly? The room remained silent. The boy looked mortified.

Everyone held a hand to their mouth as if they were the ones feeling hurt.

She stumbled to her feet, down the steps, and put her hands on the boy's shoulders; he was taller than her. "No," she said stubbornly.

He blinked, dark lashes fluttering nervously. "I'm sorry," he said again as if that would make everything okay. "I saw it myself."

"I don't care. _I don't care_. I need—" She couldn't think of the word no matter how hard she tried. It would have been too painful to force past her lips anyway. "Where is he? I need to see him." And then, softly, "Please."

He turned his gaze helplessly to Elsa, who still stood to the right of her throne. As if finding reassurance in what he saw, he said, "I don't think…"

"I don't care what you think." She flinched at the tone of her own voice. "Where is he?"

"O-On the sled, my lady."

As she ran from the room, noise returned to it in the form of gasping and, "Princess Anna, at least take your cloak!"

She hardly cared about the chilly pre-spring air when Arendelle's Ice Master and Deliverer was not delivering, but had, instead, become a delivery himself. She hoped at first that the boy was wrong, that it was all some kind of horrible mistake, but when she came across the sled—Kristoff's sled, the one she'd picked out for him to replace the one that had been ruined what felt like a lifetime ago—she knew better. Knew by the dullness in Sven's eyes and the tarp stretched across the back that the boy who was on her heels was not mistaken.

Sven shoved his face into her chest, and she wrapped her arms around his neck for a moment, but the part of her that needed to know for sure moved to the back of the sled and reached for the off-white tarp.

People were trailing out into the yard, and they grew quiet again.

"Princess Anna," the boy said, moving to stand in front of her. "P-Please forgive my rudeness, but you should not look." When she said nothing immediately, he added, "He drowned," as if that explained it all, as if the method of death was going to keep her from wanting to see him one last time, as if settling for the last memory she had of him alive was going to be _enough_ for her.

"Get out of my way," she said, and it sounded so much like an order that she surprised even herself.

He did, scurried away from her and went back to wringing his hat in his hands as she lifted the tarp.

Kristoff hardly looked like himself anymore, but it was him—the tousled blond hair, the slope of his nose. The glint of gold on his hand.

She lowered the tarp again and wished for the first time in her life to be a weak woman. To be able to cry would be relieving; to faint would be preferable.

But she could do neither in front of so many people, in front of Sven. She felt strangely empty.

"Thank you," she whispered, but as soon as she said it, she could not recall why.

Maybe she was thanking the chilly air; because of it, there was not much of a smell.

She moved back to Sven and began, hands shaking, to free him from his harness. "Well, buddy," she said, "you've had a rough few days, huh? Are you hungry?"

She could almost hear Kristoff's Sven-voice in her head saying, "Not really."

"Of course not," she said. The harness came away slowly, and nobody interfered. Elsa stood off to the side looking much older than she really was. "What you really want," she whispered as she led him to the stables, "is some sleep. Lots and lots of sleep. And a hug."

So she gave him one.

It was hard for her to care how ridiculous she looked, clinging to a reindeer, when all that remained of Kristoff was his body and the last memory she had of him.

(His lips pressed against her temple, and one hand smoothed back her sleep-tousled hair.

"I love you," she whispered, still warm and half asleep.

"I love you, too," he said, and then kissed her flat stomach. "And you."

She ruffled his hair affectionately, and he gave that silly, shy sort of laugh that she'd grown to enjoy hearing. "You don't know that there's anything there." They had been married for a number of years, but had no children, and not for lack of trying.

He kissed her mouth and then grinned. "Anna, after last night…it's almost a guarantee.")

* * *

"Are you okay?" It was Olaf's voice, breaking through the typical sounds of the stables. Anna stirred, fingers clenching around the medal that Sven usually wore around his neck.

"Oh," Olaf said. "_Oh_. You were resting. I'm sorry. I just heard."

Sven lowered his head and nuzzled Olaf's cheek.

Anna suddenly felt like crying.

"I'm okay," she said.

"If you need anything…"

Anna felt it was a hundred times more helpful than the phrase, "I'm sorry."

"Thanks, Olaf," she said, and hugged him, because he looked like he needed one. "I…should probably… Would you stay here for a while with Sven?"

"Yeah. Of course."

As she left the stables, arms wrapped around herself, she heard Olaf ask,

"Hey, buddy. Do you want to talk about it?"

* * *

Anna was the one who did the knocking; that was how it had always been, and how, she thought/worried/wondered, it would always be.

But when she heard a knock on her door long after the dinner hour had passed, she was surprised to find Elsa on the other side.

"Anna," her sister said, eyebrows still drawn together.

Anna wanted to smooth them out again, to say, "I'm okay," so that Elsa would not look so sad, but she couldn't say it, not to her own sister, not to the one person she had always wanted to find on the other side of her door asking to be let in. She stood aside, and Elsa moved into the room.

Though her sister's mouth opened, no words came out for a long time.

Anna did not know what to say, so she remained silent and waited for her sister to find what it was she was looking for.

"The funeral will be the day after tomorrow."

The words sounded hollow in the room. Wrong, somehow. "I suppose sooner is better."

"Yes."

To prevent the funeral itself from smelling like decay. Anna tried not to think about his swollen fingers rotting away until his wedding ring fell to the bottom of the casket.

Elsa swallowed. "I can't believe they sent a boy with the news; they should have sent an adult."

Anna agreed with a slight jerking of her head.

Her sister fiddled with her skirt, fingers twisting in the fabric. "Well," she murmured, awkwardly. "I guess I should leave you to—"

"I'm pregnant," Anna said.

"I know," Elsa whispered. "I could tell—I mean…I suspected."

"What do I do? Elsa, we waited so long for this. And now…"

Elsa looked like she was about to cry. She opened her mouth, but closed it again.

Anna twisted the ring on her left hand.

"I don't have all of the answers," Elsa finally said. Her crown sat tilted on the top of her head, as if she'd tried to rake her hands back through her hair and had met its resistance.

"I'm sorry." It was an unfair question.

"No, I'm sorry. That you have to go through this."

"It's not your fault." Anna wished that she could make the conversation less awkward.

Elsa stood there for a long time and said nothing at all, but the look on her face was one of internal struggle. Anna turned her gaze to the window, feeling, for some reason, that she was seeing something private.

When she felt her sister's arms wrap around her, she nearly jumped out of her skin, but the tears that pricked her eyes at the gentle embrace prevented it. Almost against her will, she sank into Elsa's arms and clung to her as if doing so would make everything all right again.

"Elsa," she whispered, squeezing her sister as tightly as she could, "I don't know what to do."

Gradually, Elsa's hold on her began to tighten until Anna couldn't figure out who was holding whom. "I'm here," she said. "I'm not going anywhere." And then, after just one moment of hesitation, "I love you, Anna. I won't let you go through this alone. I'm right here."

That was when the tears finally came, hot and embarrassingly noisy. Anna tried to hide them against her sister's shoulder.

* * *

The funeral was quiet and small.

Anna tried not to think about the last time she wore black, about the last time she had seen the dirt piled up high on the same hill.

Elsa's hand felt warm in hers.

When the graveside service was over, Anna whispered, "I want to stay until the end." Until she couldn't see what remained of Kristoff anymore, until she felt certain that her Ice Master and Deliverer had been delivered to the other side. The dirt falling onto the wooden casket was soothing in its own way; it gave her the ability to say goodbye in steps, a little more with each shovelful.

("I think a girl would be nice."

"A girl? No way; a boy, so that he can be as handsome as his father."

"A girl. With _your_ freckles."

"What? No way!"

"I happen to like your freckles!"

"Because you're _weird_."

"No, because I love you and they're a part of you.")

_Goodbye, Kristoff._

Elsa's hand squeezed hers gently as the hole began to fill up.

_Goodbye._

Anna wondered how much it had hurt to die like that, under the ice, suffocated by water. Surely it hurt more than to be left behind. Had he been able to tell which way was up? Had he struggled to hold on just a little longer as he tried to find a way out of the water from beneath the ice?

_I love you._

("Would you really prefer a girl?"

His expression sobered. "Anna, I love you so much that sometimes it scares me. I don't know what I would do if I lost you."

"You won't lose me."

"It doesn't matter if we have a boy or girl. It doesn't matter if we can't have children at all. What matters to me is that you're safe."

"Kristoff, I—"

"I'll see you when I return." He kissed her, fingers combing back through her hair as if to put it in some semblance of order. "Goodbye, Anna.")

_Goodbye._

She felt Elsa's hand again, this time on her shoulder. "Are you all right?" her sister asked, softly.

Anna managed a faltering smile. "I will be," she said.


End file.
